Anglo-Saxon and Insular art
Goldwork from the pagan age met Christian book art, and the result was some of the most marvellous manuscripts in Europe.
After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, Anglo-Saxon peoples from the Continent settled in what would become England. Their art was at first an art for warriors and kings. It was worn on the body as buckles, sword fittings and helmets in gold and garnet. The patterns were interlaced animals and loops twisting into one another. There were almost no images of people, but the craftsmanship was of the highest order and could match anything in Europe.
Christianity brought books, stone churches and writing. Monks from Ireland and Iona met missionaries sent from Rome, and in the monasteries of Northumbria a hybrid style emerged. It is called Insular, from the Latin word for island. It combined the old interlace patterns with the book culture and imagery of the Mediterranean. Gospel books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels are among the finest things created anywhere in early medieval Europe, and they show that the British Isles were a centre, not a periphery.
The Viking raids from the 790s hit the monasteries hard, but art lived on. Under King Alfred and his successors, southern England gained new centres, above all Winchester. There books were painted with swelling foliage and lively figures in fluttering garments. English embroidery and goldwork were famous far beyond the country's borders. The era ends with the Norman Conquest of 1066, told in an embroidery almost 70 metres long: the Bayeux Tapestry.